Keziah Coffin eBook

’The cruel billows
crash and roar,
And the frail craft is tempest-tossed,
But the bold mariner thinks not of life,
but says,
“It is the fust schooner ever I
lost."’

And ’twas, too, and the last, poor thing!
Well, I just got fur as this when I looked up and
there was the minister lookin’ out of the window
and his face was just as red, and he kept scowlin’
and bitin’ his lips. I do believe he was
all but sheddin’ tears. Sympathy like that
I appreciate.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. Ellery had just seen Grace
Van Horne pass that window. She had not seen
him, but for the moment he was back in that disgusting
study, making a frenzied toilet in the dusk and obliged
to overhear remarks pointedly personal to himself.

Grace left the parsonage soon after the supposed tramp
disclosed his identity. Her farewells were hurried
and she firmly refused Mrs. Coffin’s not too-insistent
appeal to return to the house “up street”
and have supper. She said she was glad to meet
Mr. Ellery. The young minister affirmed his delight
in meeting her. Then she disappeared in the misty
twilight and John Ellery surreptitiously wiped his
perspiring forehead with his cuff, having in his late
desire for the primal necessities forgotten such a
trifling incidental as a handkerchief.

“Well, Mr. Ellery,” observed Keziah, turning
to her guest, or employer, or incumbrance—­at
present she was more inclined to consider him the
latter—­“well, Mr. Ellery, this has
been kind of unexpected for all hands, ain’t
it? If I’d known you was comin’ to-day,
I’d have done my best to have things ready,
but Cap’n Elkanah said not before day after
to-morrow and—­but there, what’s the
use of talkin’ that way? I didn’t
know I was goin’ to keep house for you till this
very forenoon. Mercy me, what a day this has
been!”

The minister smiled rather one-sidedly.

“It’s been something of a day for me,”
he admitted. “I am ahead of time and I’ve
made a lot of trouble, I’m afraid. But yesterday
afternoon I was ready and, to tell the truth, I was
eager to come and see my new home and get at my work.
So I started on the morning train. Then the stage
broke down and I began to think I was stranded at Bayport.
But this kind-hearted chap from Wellmouth—­I
believe that’s where he lived—­happened
to pull up to watch us wrestling with the smashed wheel,
and when he found I was in a hurry to get to Trumet,
offered to give me a lift. His name was—­was
Bird. No, that wasn’t it, but it was something
like Bird, or some kind of a bird.”

“Bird?” repeated Keziah thoughtfully.
“There’s no Birds that I know of in Wellmouth.
Hum! Hey? ’Twa’n’t Sparrow,
was it?”